Apparently the James Bond series is getting too
boring. Why doesn’t anyone ever fill me in on these things? To correct the
faults of the seeming lag in the spy genre, director Rob Cohen gives us XXX
(read "triple X") and falls into the same trap that plagued his The
Fast and the Furious. Both classify as and promise mindless, summer
entertainment, but neither fulfills the promise. The Fast and the Furious
offered a couple of car races in the beginning and one big chase at the finale
and filled the rest with a brainless plot with no action in sight. XXX
admittedly works better; it has superior special effects, better action
sequences, more stunts, and puts Vin Diesel in the spotlight. Perhaps that’s
all a spy movie needs, and I would be happy to enjoy such a visceral experience.
Once again, though, the middle act is bogged down in plot—this time clichéd
instead of brainless.

So goes the story: The NSA is having some trouble
in Prague. One of their agents is killed during an attempt to steal a microchip
from some very bad men (the intelligence agent who thought a tuxedo was the
appropriate attire to blend into a Czechoslovakian heavy metal club should at
least get a pay cut). The giveaway, scarred agent Augustine Gibbons (Samuel L.
Jackson) says, is that the villains could "smell their training."
Gibbons doesn’t just have a weird name, he has a crazy idea: recruit some
criminals into the agency. Enter Xander Cage (Diesel), the mastermind behind an
"underground Internet site" (is it even possible to have such a
thing?) featuring extreme stunts like stealing a state Senator’s Corvette,
driving it off a bridge, and parachuting to safety. His qualifications: he’s a
criminal-at-large, a daredevil, and a poster boy for attitude. After a couple of
tests (one that shows off his keen perception and the other his prowess on a
motorcycle), he’s sent to infiltrate Anarchy ’99, an anarchist group
(self-explanatory from their name) with a lot to hide.

The story is the stuff of all spy thrillers, and
in trying to update the genre for a younger, hipper sensibility, screenwriter
Rich Wilkes has gone for the basics. The villain, played by Marton Csokes, is
foreign, trying to take over or destroy the world, and when about to finish off
the hero, always talks long enough for some deus ex machina element to
save the day. The group’s strategy is reminiscent of the villains in The
Sum of All Fears, except that you suspect that even anarchists would
note the irrationality of the resulting political and environmental climate if
their plan succeeds and try to have more than about twenty people on the staff
before taking on such a project. His henchmen have little quirks, like smoking,
and having funny accents, and liking Xander. All right, they aren’t really
quirks, but you get the idea. Xander has to become a part of the militia in
order to see how they work, an angle taken directly out of The Fast and the
Furious but of course done countless time before. And there’s a girl,
played here by Asia Argento. Her character is kept a mystery, ready to play both
sides as needed by the screenplay.

Let’s face it, the only reason for this plot is
to provide some action, and on this level, the movie delivers—occasionally.
The opening bridge stunt sets the tone—a stunt, done by real stuntmen,
surrounded by explosions, captured from multiple camera angles, and edited in
slow motion. There’s an elaborate test concocted by the NSA which places
Xander in Colombia to unknowingly become the part of a firefight between the
national army and guerrillas. Again, there are lots of explosions, and Xander
jumps over a few buildings on a motorcycle. After this sequence, insert the
plot. A while later, we get back to basics with the movie’s most effective
action sequence. In it, Xander decides that the best way to destroy a
mountainside communications tower is to bury it in an avalanche, and of course,
he has to manually set the explosives to initiate the avalanche and escape it on
snowboard. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be any fun, right? And it’s a little more
plausible than outrunning a fireball.

XXX is mostly notable for announcing the
arrival of an action star. Vin Diesel has the kind of affably rebellious
charisma perfect for Xander or X or XXX or whatever this guy wants to call
himself. He has a strong presence and holds the movie together as much as he can
when the plot kicks in. Did you expect any less from a guy whose name is Vin
Diesel?